The Sexual Freedom Project: Don’t Yuck Somebody’s Yum

The Sexual Freedom Project: Don’t Yuck Somebody’s Yum

 (También en Español)

Members of Kent State University’s 40 year old Pride organization muse on some of their organized meetings focusing on fetishes — a way for people to map their desire in a safe place and apart from their own sexual identify and/or gender orientation.

How does anonymity influence our fantasies or real life experiences? Have you had similar safe, judgment-free opportunities to talk with others about your own sexuality and gender expression, at home, school, work, church, or elsewhere? And what were your impression of the results, and will you share them with us?

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

 

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Just One Box

(También en Español)

As an activist, as you evolve your point of view, even your sexual orientation or gender identity, have you ever found or felt your position or voice compromised?

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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The Sexual Freedom Project: The Glass Closet

(También en Español)

What issues in your own family that are “off limits” in terms of discussion due to past or present circumstances? Does your family make you live in a glass closet, where everyone knows about your sexual orientation and/or gender identity but just are unwilling to talk about it?  Do you wish your family was more comfortable talking about these tender issues?

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

(Editor’s note: The Family Acceptance Project has many resources for your family that can help based on decades of sound research that proves that family acceptance is crucial in reducing youth homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide.)

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Real Democracy Demands Economic Democracy

The Garment Worker Scott Beale/laughingsquid.com Flickr/creative commons

The Garment Worker
Scott Beale/laughingsquid.com
Flickr/creative commons

“Only 1 out of 8 American households is able to have the American Dream.”

Richard D. Wolff, author of Democracy At Work: A Cure for Capitalism, and leader of the Democracy At Work movement, appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time

We were told as children that capitalism was good because it supported the middle class. We were sold on the idea as “the American way,” but we all must admit at this point that capitalism has led us to some very bad consequences, burying this country in turmoil by making everyone poor so a few can become rich . . . very, very rich.

Wolff is a heterodox economist and Professor at The New School in New York City, looking more broadly at systems that work for all people, not just the “winners,” the few at the top. Wolff shows us how our capitalist crisis heaps “huge burdens on us for years,” taking issue with Americans total rejection of marxist criticism and other critics who actually had a few good alternatives for how to better approach commerce.

Wolff has become the chief spokesman bringing people to understand why democracy is absent from our economic system. 

For example, Wolff explains in the video below how new associations can make substantive change by replacing capitalism with worker self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) wherein workers decide how to use profits.  

Upon our relaunch this past spring, our Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom offered up the formula for real progress: the elimination of old, inhumane, and coercive systems; the preservation of what is old but also humane; and the creation of new, humane, and voluntary systems. We like to catalog progress, taking note when we we see it. Democracy At Work is one of the best examples of this new movement and is worthy of our attention and support. Together, we can make a difference.

 

Also see: The Silenced Majority by Amy Goodman

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Do your own research


The level of sex education in America’s schools is impartial at best and at its worst calls for abstinence. What has been your experience?

Many people believe that the responsibility for sex education lies with your parents. How has the worked for you?

The bottom line makes you responsible for your own sex ed, researching those aspects that teachers, parents, and even your peers left out. There are plenty of good sources of sex ed on the Internet (and in your local library), including sites especially for teens such as teen source, Scarleteen, and sexetc, so you don’t need to be left in the dark.

What have you done to complete your sex education?

If you believe is sexual freedom, then sex ed is an important tool for you.

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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The Sexual Freedom Project: Influences

 


How do you describe it? What culture, family, or church constraints do you think interfere with full equality for all people?

Let’s hear your voice. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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The Sexual Freedom Project: What stands in the way?

(También en Español)


What stands in the way of your sexual freedom? We want to know!

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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The Sexual Freedom Project: Discussing Polyamory

Polyamory, loving more than one partner, is finally getting the exposure it needs in the media and elsewhere. These are natural relationships based on shared values and deserve just as much respect as any other relationship. This may not be your cup of tea but that doesn’t mean you are incapable of recognizing and respecting relationships that are different from your own.

Consider this: monogamy, and the rigid jealousy with which it is partnered, has long been the cause of so many broken families, needlessly, because of a general misunderstanding of what fidelity is all about. It’s not about “cheating” because whom are you cheating on, yourself or your objecting partner? Most people don’t stray because they are afraid, their desire for safety and stability trumping their true desires.

Fidelity is about reciprocal loyalty, and as long as that is in place, everyone, whether married or not, should be free to experience their sexuality as they wish, without canceling out their fidelity to their committed partner or to their new committed partners. This expression of fidelity, giving your partner the freedom to express their desires however they choose, actually strengthens all relationships to the extent they are open and honest. Fidelity by definition accepts the notion that fidelity can exist within a multitude of relationships, sexual or not.

Cutting off your sexuality just because you are in a committed relationship doesn’t add up for those who wish to expand their sexual horizons. This is not to say that polyamory doesn’t come with many challenges, but they always lead to self-understanding, mutual understanding, and, ultimately, self-mastery.

What do you think? Let us know by making your own video, writing a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you one of our prized  prized VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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Rounding Out for Independence Day Weekend: 7-minute Video Montage

Closing out a good weekend of reflection, remembering the once cherished America that valued its diversity born of immigration, yearning for the end of hate worldwide. As we wrote over the weekend, the puritans are responsible for the corporatized theocratic fundamentalism today eating away America and trouble spots across the globe; and, how and why sexual freedom is the bedrock of all freedoms and is worth fighting for.

So here’s our little celebration — a montage of some of our best Sexual Freedom Project videos of the last few years.

We send each contributor one of our prized VenusPlusX T-shirts (with our slogan: Sexual Freedom, You Are Born With It) when they send us a video (or an essay, work of art, etc.) expressing what sexual freedom means, or means to them. So get out your phone or video camera and let us hear from you!

This video runs 7:18 minutes. For more videos, click here.

Also: A Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom (2014)

 

Teens Thinking About Homophobia Must Dig Deeper

Note: the slurs in this video are not censored to enable a frank discussion.

These teens were shown a video of a recent homophobic reaction on a public street by Jonah Hill, the actor, and another video showing his apology on a late night talk show where he was a guest. It is worth watching to the end because it takes a while for some of these teens to get close to the crux of the problem in both the slur and the apology.

The teens were especially struck by Hill’s apology that noted his long-standing support the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, and his regret that he was provoked by paparazzi that had been dogging him all day. Hill said, at that moment, he wanted to say the “most terrible thing he could think of” but he didn’t mean it in a homophobic way. A total disconnect relieving him of any actual responsibility for what he said.

Most of these teens come very close to concluding that homophobic slurs are never okay outside your small circle of friends who would know it was in jest. Some decided on the spot to stop using these slurs in consideration of anyone who might be listening and be hurt by them.

That’s a noble first step but we have to dig deeper. This is not just a homophobic slur — it’s actual homophobia.

What all of these public displays of homophobia reveal is a very real central belief buried in the consciousness of the person speaking them, that calling out someone as gay or a f**got or a c**k-sucker is the worse thing you could say. You may be a straight person like Hill or Alec Baldwin, and may even have done some stuff to advance the rights of LGBT persons, but when you want to shout back in anger you draw on your true character, who you really are as a person.

A better apology is that you found you needed counseling and education to find out why you, yourself, view being gay so negatively, and that you will work hard in the future to help yourself and others understand that gay is actually good, certainly as good as choosing to be a heterosexual.

These celebrities, whose social contract assumes public displays of their good, bad, and ugly expressions, shouldn’t get off the hook with faux apologies focused on what a good LGBT supporter they have been. They were caught showing something deep inside them that triggered the reaction in the first place, and as painful as that is, it’s not something that should be swept under the rug.